Trigona corvina (Cockerell, 1913) is a species of stingless bee that lives primarily in Central and South America. In Panama, they are sometimes known as zagañas. They live in protective nests high in the trees, but they can be extremely aggressive and territorial over their resources. They use their pheromones to protect their food sources and to signal their location to nest mates. This black stingless bees of the tribe Meliponini can be parasitic toward citrus trees but also helpful for crop pollination.
Taxonomy and phylogeny
Trigona corvina belong to Trigona, the largest genus of stingless bees, with over 80 species. T. corvina was once classified as a variety of Melipona ruficrus based on worker appearance. Fossil records of the Meliponini tribe have been discovered and it is now understood that they differentiated from other related wasps in the Late Cretaceous period. The tribe is distinct with regards to their reduced wing venation and their reduced sting, which led to their development as stingless bees. It is possible that the differentiation of the Meliponini occurred in parallel with the dominance of flowering plants.
Description and identification
Called "conga" locally in Costa Rica
Workers of T. corvina are primarily black with smokey wings; they have a thorax width of 2.34 mm. The typical body length for a T. corvina is 6mm. They have a wide facial quadrangle and five-toothed mandibles covered in reddish brown hairs. They also have black, erect hairs on their clypeus. The virgin queens are differentiated from the workers by their shiny head, wider thorax and longer wings. They are a larger insect overall than workers. Males have a narrower facial quadrangle than both the workers and the queen. They are also differentiated by their mandibles, which have red stripes at their base and also by their legs which are not uniformly black. Trigona fuscipennis bees and Trigona corvina are often mistaken for one another since they are similar in appearance. Trigona fuscipennis workers are also...
